Ethiopia – Report #1 by Brother Thomas Brchan – June 2010

11Jun

Greetings to you my brothers and sisters in Christ,

I am sending my first impressions from Africa.

So far, it looks like nothing much happens; we have prayer meetings and preparations about what will be, where, and how. The first meeting will begin on Saturday in the home church. There should be mainly people who left various large denominations, so it is a chance to bring them an understanding about how they should function as a church according to God’s order, and also that the most important in that functioning is their personal relationship with God for each one of them.

The airport in Addis Ababa was unexpectedly busy. I was surprised that they did not want to let me go with a camera because it looked too professional. After some persuasion that my camera really is not professional, but belongs to the category of “a little better camera,” and that I am really not a professional photographer, they returned our passports to us. I really did not understand why they did it. I found out later that this country went through the communism, rather the same as us in the Czech Republic, but they did not leave the communism entirely at all. They still have a lot of control mechanisms here by which they try to keep people in subjection and ignorance.

Communism breathes here on you (you can feel it) in every step you make, just by the fact that the most common vehicle here is an old car, LADA, from the era of the Soviet Union. Also, a huge monument with a red star on top speaks for itself. I expected poverty, so I was not surprised by beggars and diverse diseased, lame, and street living people from babies to old men. Nevertheless, you have to steel yourselves against it a little bit. It is something else to know about it and another to see it with your own eyes when you pass by them. It helps me much to know and to have a understanding that it is a spiritual reality and if I would have bestowed all my money to them, I could not rescue them from hell. Let the church rise to a higher level (realm), that we will not be able to help just in specific projects, but mainly throw down the powers of the air that hold mankind in captivity of hell and death. In Ethiopia it is about 40% Muslim. You can see it everywhere. Muslim men with caps (hats) on their heads, but especially the women who are heavily veiled in burkas. Thank God that no one minds when they pass by a woman with an unveiled head and hairstyle; nothing happens. At least they have a freedom in some way. Nevertheless, you can see, but also every evening you can hear how Muslims are fully committed to their religion. We have their prayer place under our windows where they gather every evening for prayers and invocations of the god of violence and death. I was thinking about why we sometimes have such a big problem to be fully devoted to the One we believe in and why they do not have this problem. Only that their god gives them exactly what their body asks, but we are fighting against the lusts of our body. But it is also only excuse, because our God gives us exactly what our soul needs, and if we have tasted His goodness and love, then everything else is just an excuse.